


coping

by euriele



Category: Red vs. Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2003709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euriele/pseuds/euriele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both went insane; they understand each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coping

You don’t know how Washington does it.

After Eta and Iota, nightmares aren’t something new to you. How many times do you sit up and scream as the voices tore through your mind, dragging up memories you’d rather forget and shouting that name like a mantra over and over again until you could feel blood beading beneath the fingernails digging into your skin.

_Allison Allison Allison._

That’s all it ever was with Eta and Iota. That’s the imprint they left upon you. That single name, the memories of a woman with blonde hair. She’s faceless, always turned away from you. It’s obviously the last thing the twins remembered before they were torn away from the Alpha.

Your little brother got it worse. He got all those memories. You rewatched the security tapes afterwards, had Eta and Iota tap into the MOI’s mainframe and get them for you. You remember him screaming, screaming something about goodbyes that stirs a memory you buried so deep it was all but forgotten.

You figured out who Allison was.

It made the nightmares worse.

And when Eta and Iota are torn from the back of your mind, they escalate. You see Maine, stalking towards you blood-soaked armour as the flames dance off of his visor. You hear his growls now;when you’re lying in the darkness, all you can hear is his growls, an echo at the back of your mind. The only reason that sound haunts you is because you were too late to stop a man emptying an entire clip into Maine’s throat.

There’s another voice too, one that curls the edges of your nightmares with red. When he speaks, all you feel is heat. Heat that surges through your veins and burns white hot, but keeps you paralysed where you lay. And you only wake up when he tells you too, when you finally hear Sigma’s voice at the back of your mind.

“ _Wake up, Hayley._ ”

Sigma’s an ever constant in your nightmares, and it only gets worse with Epsilon in your mind.

Too many memories, too many fragments. There’s nights when you’re a soldier in golden brown armour, speaking to a green figure and getting shout by a man in white armour; nights where you’re in purple and green and you’re begging the Meta to leave you be; nights where your vision is tinted purple and blue and you’re watching a familiar blonde man bleed out on the ground whilst your helpless to do nothing but scream, scream as he dies and as you hear the whispers around you, begging you to join them -

The worst nights are the nights you burn, the nights your limbs sear with pain and your mouth opens in a scream you can’t release. Nights where you’re not the one dying; rather, you’re the one behind the trigger, the one pressing knives into throats and snapping kneecaps and bisecting poor individuals who happen to get in your way.

Those are the nights that hurt the most.

And it’s one of those dreams that prompts you to go to Wash.

You pulled Epsilon. You always do. He’s too much at nights, all those calculations and memories running through his head and it stops you from sleeping. Exhaustion is a deadly enemy, so you have to pull him. You need to at least try and sleep.

But Epsilon is memory, and memories leave an impact on your brain. So it’s not much of a surprise when you jolt awake, skin slick with sweat and heart hammering in your chest, the growls of the Meta fading in with the ambience of the jungle around the base.

Press a hand over your eyes; wipe the sweat from your forehead. You need Wash.

You pass the mirror on the way out of your room, see the deep shadows beneath your eyes and sweat clinging to your skin. Your hair - greasy and matted and in need of washing - clings to your forehead. You’re suddenly glad you cut the pony tail off weeks ago.

You lean closer to the mirror, close enough to see each of the freckles across your cheeks and the red blood in your left eye. A side-effect of Eta and Iota’s overload in your mind, you remember. The Counsellor told you before implantation that subconjunctival haemorrhaging was a side effect in case the neural surge was too strong. You shrugged it off at the time.

Pull the heavy box from beneath your bed and open it. Loop your fingers around the cardboard handle of the 8 pack of beer you stole from a mercenary outpost a few weeks ago. You’ve got a feeling you’re going to need it.

Wash is in the next room over. You go to shake him awake, see how peaceful he looks in his sleep and freeze, because you’ve not had a good chance to look at your brother properly for a long while now, not with all the shit that goes on in your lives.

He still looks a lot like her, you think. He looks a lot like Allison. He’s got her long eyes, her freckles. Their noses are the same shape - fuck, even his jawline is the same as hers. Sometimes, when he’s observed from the right angle, you see a lot of Allison in him. You see it when he smiles, that stupid lopsided smile that she once had.

You shake him awake.

He blinks blearily at you, looks at you with her eyes. Grey eyes; one’s a bit more silver than grey, and the other reminds you of storm clouds. Those mismatched grey eyes are the same ones your mother had, the same ones that twinkled with delight when she laughed or sparkled with tears when she was off on a deployment. You used to be so jealous of Wash’s eyes when you were younger; he used to laugh and say your green ones were prettier.

You’ve always hated your eyes. And he’s always hated his.

Church family trait.

He sees the beer in your hands, the pallor of your face and knows what’s happened. He’s out of his bunk in a flash, pulling an aqua coloured hoodie over his head. You smile, because you knows for a fact it’s not yours or his.

He sees your smirk and flips you off.

The two of you end up on the roof of your base. It’s something you used to do as kids - go up to the roof when one of you is upset or can’t sleep and watch the stars. When you were in Freelancer, you’d meet up on one of the observation decks, lock the doors to the room and just sit and watch the stars fly by together.

It’s a tradition, you guess. A Church sibling tradition. Beers and stars and maybe talking away their problems. So it seems only fitting now to sit beneath these stars and drink and pretend nothing’s wrong.

Except it’s the first time you’ve done this for well over fifteen years.

"Different stars," Wash notes, pulling a beer from the pack.

"We could name them all at home," you say, mirroring what he does.

The two of you have a tradition: pop the lids off of your beers at the same time and link the lips together before a toast and then drink. You used to do it after missions, where you’d toast stupid things like an Insurrectionist’s gun jamming or a team mate who helped you out of a bind or even the weather.

Now, the two of you pop the lids of your beers. There’s a clink when the two glass bottles meet, and you hold them up. But the two of you freeze, because who is there to toast.

Maine? A bit too late for that.

The Twins?

Connie?

… York?

No.

"To Chorus," you say, the tiniest smile curling your lips.

Wash snorts. “Chorus.”

You both drink.

"You wanna talk about it then?"

Not really. You don’t want to think about the fire, the smell of blood wafting up your nose. The glint of the Brute shot’s blade, already slick in the blood of others. The Meta’s growls in your ear, Sigma’s eerie voice reverberating around your skull -

"Yeah," you mumble. Take another swig of your drink. The bitter taste of the alcohol is just what you need. "Yeah, I do."

He sits back, watches you carefully. The two of you sit in silence for a while, long enough to empty half of your bottle. Wash never prods, because he understands. He’s been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. He knows what the nightmares are like, what it’s like to have memories you’d rather not have imprinted on your mind, burning brightly at times you’d rather have their fire go out.

"It’s almost always the Meta," you say. Wash looks down. "Almost always. Fire and blood and pain. And when it’s not the Meta, it’s Delta or Theta or Gamma or…"

You have to stop, because the memory of Eta and Iota is still very raw in your head, all these years later. The wounds they left upon your mind are yet to mend.

Wash nods, takes another drink. He’s almost finished his. “I understand. Epsilon does that.”

"Still have nightmares?" you ask.

"Sometimes." His hand is shaking when he takes another sip.

"Want to talk about it?"

He considers that. “No.”

You nod, because you can’t pry.  _Baby steps_ , you think.

The two of you try and find a topic to talk on. One of you suggests, the other says yes or no. Mostly, the two of you say no. The word’s already out of your mouth when you hear Wash pronounce the ‘Y’ of York. The Twins is a no. Wyoming, Florida, Connie, the Reds and Blues, Chorus, the Director, Allison - no.

"Maine," you say.

Wash hesitates, fixes his eyes on a distant star system that burns pink and purple in the night sky. He’s on his third beer, rubbing the rim against his lips.

He gives a heavy sigh. “Yeah.”

You know you shouldn’t dive straight in, but you ask, “How did he die?”

Wash never told you. When you asked after you were reunited, he just said that Maine was dead. Never elaborated. You supposed that it was still too fresh a memory - and probably still is. But you want to know.

The big guy was your friend, after all.

"Tied him to a Warthog," Wash says. His voice has gone hoarse, like it does before he starts crying. "Threw it off a cliff into the ocean."

You close your eyes. Wash chugs the rest of his beer and opens his fourth. You’re still on your second.

"How d’you cope?" you find yourself asking.

"Huh?"

"How d’you cope? With Epsilon’s memories and Maine and everything else that happened?"

Wash considers that for a few moments. “I don’t.”

"You don’t?"

"No. I put on a charade and say I’m okay when I’m about to fall to pieces because I can’t afford to fall to pieces. The Director threatened to throw me in the psycho ward even though I wasn’t ready for active duty again after you guys left." You wince. You didn’t know this. "I had to say I was okay with disposing of the bodies of friends. I had to say I was okay with hunting down my former best friend."

He stares at his drink for a while before saying. “I don’t cope. I pretend.”

There’s a heavy silence that stretches on between you. Just as Wash downs the dregs of his fourth beer, he turns to you and asks, “How do  _you_  cope, hm?”

Look him straight in the eye. “I don’t.”

He nods. You both stare at the stars together.

And there’s a heavy weight lifted off of your chest, because you finally understand each other.

You’re finally getting somewhere.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this post:
> 
> http://confessionforanothertime.tumblr.com/post/92534005134/wash-and-carolina-discussing-their-ptsd-nightmares
> 
> follow me on tumblr!: ohgrif.tumblr.com


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